Whitewater tackles big snowfall with new Avalauncher

NELSON, B.C. — Mid-winter has arrived with a bang at Nelson BC’s Whitewater Resort. Quite literally.With a base of nearly 200 settled centimetres and 150 centimetres of fresh snow having fallen in the last three weeks, this season marks the arrival of the resort’s newest hired gun.The B2000-model Avalauncher has roared to life on a few occasions already this winter, in successful efforts aimed at making the resort safe and sound, well-protected from avalanches triggered in the spectacularly scenic out-of-bounds areas directly above the resort.Purchased in the off season from a Kelowna company and previously used to protect a stretch of mountainous highway in Northern Idaho, the cannon, which uses rockets fired by compressed nitrogen, allows Whitewater patrol to control the backcountry terrain under and surrounding Ymir Peak, including popular lines like Goats Slide, the Hummer chutes, Cougar’s Claw and even the vertigous and often-skied face directly beneath Ymir’s iconic 8,000-foot summit.“The snow can be stabilized when it’s most likely to slide,” explains Whitewater Outdoor Operations Manager Kirk Jensen. “Because the Avalauncher is a fast snow control method, it enables skiable terrain to be opened to the public sooner than it might otherwise have been if an alternate control method was used.”“But we’re not controlling conditions for backcountry skiing,” Jensen cautions, “we’re making the resort’s in-bound runs safer.”The Outdoor Ops boss says areas targeted by the Avalauncher are difficult and costly to reach on foot. Some of the terrain, although in plain sight of the resort’s lodge, would require a potentially dangerous and time-consuming three-hour approach by Whitewater patrollers on skis and touring skins.Beyond its cost- and time-effectiveness, Jensen explains that when the West Kootenay’s famous winter storms are howling, the gun can be “blind fired” in low visibility using predetermined co-ordinates, with great accuracy.The B2000, which replaces an older X2000  model and is valued at $35,000 new, can launch its six-finned,1.3-kilogram rockets over a kilometre.“It’s pretty impressive,” says Jensen, who notes that the same model is used to control the huge, heavy coastal snowfalls common to Blackcomb and Vancouver Island’s Mount Washington resorts. The gun will be fired before Whitewater’s regular hours of operation.If left unchecked, storm snow piled precariously high above the resort’s boundaries can slide, the debris running close to the resort’s outermost edges.Such was the case in 1998, around the time Whitewater’s original Avalauncher program was curtailed, when a Size 4 avalanche wiped out two hectares, or over five acres, of mature forest and reached the periphery of Sluice Box corner.Patrollers were instructed on how to use the new Avalauncher by John Tweedy, the man who has watched over avalanche control efforts on the Salmo Creston Pass for more than 25 years, for the BC Ministry of Transportation.Media Contacts: Brian Cusask, Whitewater Ski Resort General Manager1-250-354-4944 , Jensen, Whitewater Ski Resort Outdoor Operations Manager 1-250-354-4944 ,